European Ministers Consider Tools to Improve Water Management

July 7 (Bloomberg) -- European Union nations discussed
tools to improve the quality and management of drinking water as
consumption rises and climate change threatens to exacerbate
shortages in some parts of the region.

Environment ministers from the EU’s 27 national governments
held talks today to identify proposals that may be included in a
policy paper on safeguarding water resources at meetings hosted
by Cyprus, which took over the EU six-month rotating presidency
on July 1.

“The most important of all is to educate people to learn
how to use water and how to save water,” Cyprus Environment
Minister Sofocles Aletraris told a briefing in Nicosia. One of
the most urgent issues that member states identified was water
demand management and the EU paper must focus on improving the
situation through meters, sewage treatment and reducing water
losses in various networks.

The United Nations says about 800 million people worldwide
don’t have safe drinking water and 2.7 billion of the planet’s 7
billion inhabitants lack access to proper sanitation facilities.
Water and wastewater treatment is a $113 billion industry,
according to international agency estimates.

Europe still faces “considerable challenges,” including
pollution and a decline in soil organic matter, to achieve a
goal of clean water in all EU reservoirs, rivers, lakes and seas
by 2015, according to a background paper for today’s meeting
written by the Cypriot government.

Climate Change

“Demographic evolution, land use change and economic
development are projected to increase pollution and water
shortages,” Cyprus said in the document. “This is expected to
be exacerbated by climate change, particularly in the
Mediterranean region, while increasing the intensity and
frequency of floods in many parts of Europe.”

The EU policy paper, scheduled to be presented by the
European Commission in November, will recommend additional steps
that should be taken to improve water management at the
national, regional and river-basin level. Regulators will take
into account specific situations in individual member states,
Aletraris said.

Computer models show parts of Spain and Italy, with large
agricultural operations, getting drier and drought situations
may become more common in the coming decades.

“There was quite a broad consensus about the way forward
and we’re really encouraged after today’s debate that we’re on
the right track,” EU Environment Commissioner Janez Potocnik
told the briefing.

EU Funds

The second day of the meeting in Nicosia will be devoted to
adapting to climate change and the use of private and EU funds
to improve infrastructure and minimize threats from global
warming.

The EU is on track to meet its binding goal of lowering
carbon-dioxide discharges 20 percent by 2020 and has repeatedly
said it’s ready to tighten it if other countries, such as the
U.S. and China, follow suit.

While Cyprus will present its priorities on climate change,
the meeting won’t include discussion of EU carbon-reduction
goals beyond 2020 or the bloc’s carbon market after talks on
those issues stalled earlier this year.

Ministers don’t make formal decisions at such meetings,
which are organized twice a year by countries that hold the EU
presidency.